1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method of providing an electronic reservation and individual validation for various activities, including boarding a common carrier, and more particularly, relates to a method and system to provide an electronic individual activities reservation and validation, eliminating tickets and other paper receipts. A plastic card may also be employed with an encoded magnetic strip to identify the card holder in lieu of a paper carbon ticket for fast and efficient check-in, boarding and access to common carriers, hotels, and other activities.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Since the first days of common carriers such as commercial airlines flight, the airlines have been burdened with the job of making reservations and writing or printing out passenger tickets on paper. Although the airline ticket of today is printed on a special paper with a style difficult to counterfeit, the reservation and ticketing process has essentially remained the same. A passenger, either through the airline or ticket agent, pays for passage and a corresponding paper ticket is issued. This paper ticket is then surrendered to persons at the departure gate upon entry onto the aircraft. Likewise, in other industries, such as the hotel industry, the reservations system also includes check-in processing, paperwork, and the issuance of keys to particular individuals traveling.
The fundamental problem is validating that a particular individual has reserved and prepaid for particular activities or services, and that the particular individual continues to be valid throughout an activity process, whether making a reservation for an airline trip, boarding the aircraft, or checking into a hotel and going to a particular room. There are inherent problems in this process. Using the airlines as an example, these include the burdens of making individual reservations and payment, always having to have the correct type and style paper ticket on hand for ticket printing, and the inability for these tickets to be reused if mistakes occur or flight changes are necessary which happen often. Further, if a ticket is lost or a passenger misses a flight, an added dilemma occurs in that new tickets must be drawn up. Although a written record is usually available for the airline and passenger, this process creates an added burden since the airline ticket agent must perform the task of checking and determining the new and previous flight information for each new ticket. Moreover, the flight attendant at the departure gate must gather and hold each ticket upon passenger boarding. Often, tickets get lost or are mixed with other flights, which requires tedious work and wasted time in locating, interpreting, and arranging the misplaced tickets. Even after tickets are collected at the gate, manual sorting is often necessary to determine which passengers have boarded the correct flight and which flights were at capacity and, therefore, profitable. The key problem is validating the reservation and payment of the individual throughout the process without slowing the process at particular check points such as aircraft boarding. Similar problems exist in the hotel industry and the car rental industry.
Ticketing systems are known in the prior art. U.S. Pat. No. 4,449,186, issued to Kelly et al. on May 15, 1984, shows a self-ticketing system. This system essentially continues the paper problem and is used for vending airline tickets. U.S. Pat. No. 4,298,793, issued to Melis et al. on Nov. 3, 1981, shows a portable element, like a card, that stores and provides reservation system information. None of these systems focus particularly at validating a particular individual as to the fact that individual reservations have been made, individual payment has been made, and this individual should be able to traverse through the system without being mired in endless paper and waiting in lines. With the above problems causing much delay and loss of efficiency due to the amount of clerical work involved in keeping an accurate account of the great numbers of paper tickets issued, the present invention was developed.